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mClinica continues its rapid expansion across Southeast Asia with country launch at 9th Thailand Pharmacy Congress

On November 17 and 18, a delegation from mClinica launched country operations in Thailand at the 9th Thailand Pharmacy Congress at the Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Centre (BITEC) in Bangkok, Thailand.

There could not have been a more appropriate setting for mClinica’s Thailand launch than at this year’s congress, themed “Smart Aging Life and Digital Pharmacy 4.0.”

How mClinica is unifying pharmacists is clear: Since its launch at the beginning of this year, SwipeRx has become the leading platform for pharmacy professionals across Southeast Asia, counting more than 55,000 devoted users. In Cambodia and Indonesia, 1 in every 4 pharmacy professionals is on the platform; in the Philippines, 1 in every 3.

mClinica founder and CEO Farouk Meralli, who led the delegation at the congress, believes SwipeRx will see similarly high levels of adoption in Thailand, citing the general tech savviness of the Thai population and the fact that the problems the platform addresses transcend geography.

“I’m excited that Thai pharmacy professionals can join their counterparts across the region on SwipeRx. They’ll now be able to look up vital information on our directory of registered drugs, earn their continual professional development (CPD), ask questions to their peers, and more. In short, they can collaborate with others and develop as professionals all in a single, convenient platform,” says Meralli.

From the initial feedback received since the launch, Thai pharmacists are eager to start using the platform.

“As a pharmacist, I’ve always wondered why so many processes and tasks related to our profession had to be done separately. The fact that SwipeRx aggregates all of them onto a single platform, accessible on your smartphone, is gladly welcome. It’s the platform that I, and I think my peers in Thailand, have long been waiting for,” says Yada Puranasutheemongkol, who now heads mClinica’s pharmacy community in Thailand.

How mClinica contributes to “smart aging life” – the other half of this year’s theme – is less obvious, but no less important. While the end users of SwipeRx are pharmacy professionals, the ultimate beneficiaries are patients. As pharmacy professionals continue to educate themselves via CPD, strive to learn from their peers, and leverage the registered drug directories on a daily basis, the patients they serve will ultimately receive a better quality of care.

With mClinica’s expansion into Thailand, the company now has operations in most major markets in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Though mClinica is already eyeing East Asia for further expansion, its current reach is noteworthy as few startups – much less one in health-technology – have expanded at this rate.

Though the team is proud of the regional expansion, they are very much focused on the larger mission at hand.

“Through the network of pharmacy professionals who have joined SwipeRx, we are now collectively serving upwards of 70 million patients a month. That figure is impressive, inspiring, and incredibly motivating: We know we have hundreds of millions of patients still to reach, and we are determined to get there, one pharmacist at a time,” says Lindsay Nickel, mClinica’s head of new markets.